Note: This is a seattlepi.com reader blog. It is not written or edited by the P-I. The authors are solely responsible for content. E-mail us at newmedia@seattlepi.com if you consider a post inappropriate.

There Is A Profiteering War On For Your Attention. So Take It Back.

Something on my mind lately is that I believe the CHIEF AIM of all media, spotlight-hungry personalities, and all businesses and orgs with media presence (or ambitions that way) is to capture and hold OUR ATTENTION. As much as possible in fact. Ideally hundreds and thousands of times a day. This is the chief first requirement in order to be profitable. Without our attention – our clicks, our comments, our outrage, our lol shareables, our page traffic, our time spent on their pages/apps, none of these venues would thrive, and most would soon cease to matter or even exist. If you aren’t front-of-mind in the attention war, you won’t win.

So if we can assume this is the business goal behind all the other goals that are the publicly stated, noble ones such as ‘selling useful products” or “reporting the news” or “being the President” – then we The People ought to wise up more than we are. Just because CNN says there is a breaking update doesn’t actually mean they’ve added any new and significant content to that story. Their chief financial goal is to get you to come to their channel – on TV, yes, but on your mobile device/laptop even more so, as many times a day as possible, and for as LONG as possible. To make you LIVE there is their business goal. The orgs that grab us and keep us on their sites for the longest win financially. Everyone knows this, yes? It’s a big part of how Google ranks websites for instance, and first page ranking is of course ultra important for business anymore. So your time on those sites matters. If they can get you to emotionally react and then spend time commenting or ‘contributing’, even better for them and their rank and ad revenue. And you choose to spend time when your ATTENTION is grabbed.

I think we are all being sucked down rabbit holes online especially every day, every hour, even every minute for some people. Have you become more or less aware that there is little to no added content to anything anymore? And yet we keep feeling compelled to check and click anyway when told or baited to? I miss the days when the news had one or two chances to report to us in a day. One or two chances to really tell that important story. Get all the facts. Report it well. Write it with substance. For a long time, the 10pm news was one of the only (and definitely final) chance in any given day to get us to know information that a media outlet possessed and needed to report to the country. Now it feels like it’s every second there’s something further “breaking” to add to EVERY headline story. The truth is no there’s not. There just isn’t substance to add every second. Check it tomorrow whatever the next big horrible thing is. Check out and analyze the 53 breaking new additions they will bait you with before your first coffee break. It’s mostly untrue that they’re actually adding anything substantive and new. We are all being had. Our attention is BEING LURED AND STOLEN ALL DAY LONG by half-baked, mediocre quality, media/reporting/entertaining. On all sides. So little of the barrage of 24/7 info is actually significant or adding to our knowledge base or quality of life or intelligence or happiness. The person in the top office is the best I’ve ever seen at doing this by the way – this grabbing hold of our attention – whether we agree or disagree with what he directs us to see/react to. The very, very best. It’s his true genius. He gets it like no other that all press is good press. Even bad press. Maybe especially bad press. He totally uses it because he totally gets this concept and capitalizes greatly on its effectiveness for his profit. It’s us who don’t get it.

JFK files? Perfect example. Billions of people will now be ready and waiting click bait for every ‘breaking update’ he might give. He could release one freaking word at a time of those sealed files for the next three years, and people would click on every word individually, hungrily. It’s likely the #1 conspiracy story in the world so the multi-generational audience for that is primed and built-in. It’s brilliant. Utterly brilliant. Great press move. Great that is if you’re chief aim is to take and hold people’s attention, as many times a day as possible, for as long as possible for your own gain.

I don’t post much about Trump on fast clicking social media for example like a lot of people do. I don’t post all his latest moves or tweets or videos or expenditures. I also don’t post about anyone else who’s a super strong attention getter. If I believe in someone’s real cause and that’s what the attention really is for (especially if attention mongering hasn’t been some gross, me-me-me perpetual lifestyle), after thinking long and hard about it and doing my due diligence, yep I will re-post and point people’s attention that way. But not if they’ve always been tabloid fodder or attention whores or have made it their chief aim to just get attention without adding to anyone’s lives in good and worthwhile ways. It matters to me WHO the attention is truly serving, if I’m going to give it more.

This all said about our attention being the hot commodity, and who is effective at taking it and holding it captive, we all need to take control back. Our attention IS being TAKEN. Stolen away. Massaged away. Provoked away. Tickled away. Shocked away. It’s being taken advantage of by an endless myriad of profiteers who have as their goal that we would put our attention on them all day and night long. When this happens, our attention is taken away from real life. From the people we love. From our work day. From our school day. From our sleep hours. From our pets. From our growth. From our exercise and health. From our time outdoors. From our quality reading time. From our actual hobbies. From our service to others and society. It’s just flat out being taken by so many, many sources and venues and personalities anymore. It really has become a 24/7 attention war. The average person opens Facebook for example 85 times a day. And that’s just an average user. There are people in the thousands. My guess is that often amounts to about half a work day in hours. And of course there is also Snapchat that I heard recently compared to heroin, the relentlessness of it, the way people are connected to it, and how often the need becomes to be hooked into to it. That commentary was sure food for thought.

What do we get in return for giving our truly precious attention away all day long? What we get is often very little – mediocrity, low quality ‘content’, repeated wasting of our time by baiting us deceptively with no new information, and outrage/emotional expenditure that certain entities very much deliberately set us up to react that exact way so our attention stays on them. We are being had. Distracted. Outright deceived and suckered too often. And flat out USED every minute anymore to promote someone or something’s popularity and spotlight and influence – their PROFIT. Take your attention back. Give it where it’s best given. I’m going to work on this in my life too.

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Christina Hyun is a sometimes questionably successful mom to two young adults, a real estate broker at John L. Scott Issaquah, and the owner of a goofy yellow lab named Hols. Her blog name “Beast Mom” came from a Mother’s Day card her young son wrote that said, “I loav you Mom. You’re the beast!” It was the perfect mistake.

Christina is an award winning short story author and has been blogging at the Seattle P-I since 2006.
Connect with her. She likes social media. Just a little. 😉 (Or better yet, skip the clicks in my auto-signature and go outside and get some fresh air, walk your dog, play catch with your kids, have lunch with friends, or read a great piece of literature.)

Note: This is a seattlepi.com reader blog. It is not written or edited by the P-I. The authors are solely responsible for content. E-mail us at newmedia@seattlepi.com if you consider a post inappropriate.